AP Report Destroys Rapid Sea Level Rise Panic

An Associated Press article about Typhoon Haiyan (Man, nature share typhoon tragedy blame  – Death toll much higher because of flimsy building, growth in vulnerable areas, by Seth Borenstein),  inadvertently let the biggest cat out of the alarmist bag concerning our California coast. “(T)he Philippines has seen its sea rise nearly half an inch in the past 20 years, about triple the global increase.” This is an increase of only 2.5 inches per century for the Philippines, and less than an inch per century globally.

These numbers are in marked contrast to the projections of 18 to 66 inches of sea level rise by 2100 made by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Even the UN’s lowest estimate hasn’t been seen since shortly after the end of the Ice Age 12,000 years ago, when sea level was over 400 feet lower and huge ice caps were melting rapidly because average global temperature was up to five degrees Fahrenheit warmer than now.

Average sea level rise for the past 120 centuries since the end of the Ice Age has been over three feet per century, but has averaged around zero per century the past 10,000 years. In the face of facts that sea level rise does not appear to be significant at the moment, and with nothing that suggests a rapid acceleration this century, San Francisco Bay Area planners are still developing plans to cope with a five-foot increase by 2100. Neither climate change history, physics, or current meteorology supports such a need. All that is fueling their actions is unwarranted alarmism.